ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Twitter is playing a pivotal role in rapid communication between healthcare stakeholders, governments, and the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Communication on Twitter can reach over 152 million registered daily users and over 500 million people visit the site monthly without logging into an account. The purpose of this study was to analyze tweets associated with #SARSCoV2 during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Symplur Signals, a healthcare social media analytics platform, was used to analyze all publicly available #SARSCoV2 tweets (excluding spam) between 2/11/20-4/12/20. Tweet activity, content, sentiment, associated hashtags, user characteristics/engagement, and network analysis were analyzed. Select metrics were compared before/after the COVID-19 pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO;3/11/20). Tweet sentiment was analyzed within 3 hours before/after specific timepoints. RESULTS: Exactly 894,983 tweets (73% retweets) by 400,653 users met study inclusion criteria, resulting in 2,998,817,360 impressions. Daily tweet activity peaked on 3/18/20 with 58,666 tweets. There was a 2677% increase in number of tweets from the first to last week of the study period. The average user had 2.2 tweets. There were 292,478 (33%) and 264,198 (30%) tweets containing links and media, respectively. Trending term analysis before/after the WHO pandemic declaration showed a shift in conversation across the study period toward trending terms such as patients, critical care, studies, and antibodies. The top 15 hashtags associated with #SARSCoV2 predominantly included COVID-19 related hashtags. The top 3 countries by users were the United States, Spain, and Indonesia. The top 100 influencers consisted primarily of researchers/academics (30.1%), doctors (15.1%), journalists/media (9.4%), and media organizations (9.4%). Twitter network analysis showed key central hubs of communication were researchers/academics, doctors, and journalists/media. Three hours before/ after sentiment analysis revealed that after the Unites States announcement of European travel restrictions, negative sentiment tweets rose from 41% to 52%. After the Center for Disease Control's public mask use recommendation, negative sentiment decreased from 65% to 55%. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that #SARSCoV2 rapidly coalesced into a vital digital international community for the COVID-19 pandemic with tweets from #SARSCoV2 generating nearly 3 billion impressions across a worldwide Twitter community. Notably, the most influential members of this community were researchers/academics and doctors. Quantifiable shifts in community sentiment were observed immediately following key changes in government policy. Changes in trending terms across the study period suggests #SARSCoV2 users engage in real-time discussions concurrent with recent scientific and medical discourse. Future studies should examine changes in digital health communication over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Doctors are at increased risk of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the use of N95 respirators has emerged as a critical preventive measure. We studied the real-world experiences, practices, and adverse effects of N95 respirator usage amongst Indian physicians. Methods: We conducted an analytical, cross-sectional online survey between November 2020 and January 2021. Real-world usage characteristics of N-95 respirators were collected via a pre-validated questionnaire and compared amongst different sub-cohorts. Results: A total of 453 responses from physicians were analyzed. The most important adjunct to the N95 respirator perceived by the respondents was the full-face shield (81.9%). Most doctors had to purchase extra masks per month (median = 5 ± 8), which was more among the medical specialties (p = 0.006). The highest mean VAS scores for adverse events reported were for breathing on exertion (6.62 ± 2.25) and ear pain (6.34 ± 2.69). VAS ear pain was higher in ages < 40 and doctors working in the public sector (p = 0.017 and p = 0.019 respectively). Conclusion: Despite many inadequacies regarding proper mask removal, doffing techniques, and multiple reported prolonged mask usage-related adverse effects, there is generally good adherence to protocols and good practices of mask usage amongst physicians in the hospital setting. This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License.
ABSTRACT
We designed and prototyped Odeto, which is a framework that lets students and professors mutually co-create a set of Protocols, Guidelines and Best Practices for their online design classes. In offline classes, the code of conduct in a classroom is implicitly stated, since most of our primary and secondary education has taken place in synchronous offline modes. The COVID-19 pandemic challenges us with new ways of teaching and learning, the most evident being online video classes. Due to the absence of bodily cues in online settings, it becomes difficult for both students and professors to understand what is socially acceptable and what is not. Mimicking offline classes does not help as it becomes very taxing to manage school and home both. This has a direct impact on class dynamics. Thus, we explicitly define Protocols, Guidelines and Best Practices for Online Classes to help bridge communication gaps, thereby making classrooms more effective. Newer classroom roles, such as a Videocall Moderator, that have emerged with online education are also defined in this framework. Using a Google Sheet, we created an easy to share framework that is printable and can be referenced at any point during the course. © 2020 ACM.